Masa & Co. is the original watch brand of Masa's Pastime, the Tokyo restoration atelier of Masaharu Nakajima — known to everyone simply as Masa. Back in 1990, still in his twenties and knowing only the sea after a life as a commercial diver, he left it behind and opened a tiny antique watch shop called Masa's Junkyard. Friends and seniors frowned and told him there was no way he could pull it off, but the more people told him it was impossible the more determined he became. Time and again repair shops told him the same thing — that a watch was too old, that no parts were left, that it could not be repaired — and many pieces he had carefully sourced, along with beloved watches entrusted to him by customers, were discarded and lost forever. Fed up, he made a decision: if no one can repair them, he would repair them himself, and if parts no longer existed, he would make them. From that moment he began teaching himself watchmaking and repair, with antique watches themselves becoming his greatest teachers as he pursued the questions of how a watch could continue to shine and tick faithfully for more than a century, and what separated the enduring masterpieces from the ones that failed.
He began alone, but as the years passed talented young watchmakers joined him one by one, and Masa's Junkyard grew into Masa's Pastime, a restoration team dedicated to sharing the knowledge gained from working with antique timepieces. Alongside restoration the team began creating custom watches using antique movements, which led them to learn how to craft not only movement parts but also dials, hands and cases — until they had acquired the ability to produce every component of a watch themselves. In 2012 they embarked on the ambitious project of developing a completely in-house movement; securing rare materials, acquiring specialised machinery and overcoming countless obstacles took a full decade, but in 2022 the MP1 movement was completed, designed like the great calibres of old to be passed down across generations. In 2023 team member Nayuta Shinohara produced the Nayuta Model, released under the brand Masa & Co., and in 2024 the MP Series watches powered by the MP1 joined the collection, warmly received by watch lovers in Japan and abroad. Now an early senior watchmaker, Masa has no intention of retiring: together with his team he intends to keep creating timepieces that can be cherished and handed down from one generation to the next.
